Agriculture

Over a billion people on the planet live in chronic hunger today. Global food shortage will only exacerbate with increasing population, and India along with other developing and underdeveloped countries will continue to be impacted by it. As per the FAO, India’s 1.1 billion population comprises a staggering 43 percent of underweight children in the world – with 48 percent whose growth is stunted by malnutrition.

Although it is the largest employment-provider (with 70%of the working population engaged in the sector) India’s farming continues to be subsistence, with a majority of farmers lacking the scale to command higher improved pricing or efficiencies of scale. Farmer suicides have become an annual feature and are still attributed to poor crops or debt burden, despite significant progress across farming technology, availability of weather-related data, pest control, and improved response time from local governments during disease outbreaks.

Splice sees a tremendous opportunity for innovation in food distribution including storage, processing, organic farming and demand aggregation. We invite agriculture students, farmers and entrepreneurs to bring innovative ideas to solve the endemic problems and enable improved wealth creation for the Indian farmer.